


Whose Woods These Are

by mautadite



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Gen, Growing Up, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-21 01:05:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mautadite/pseuds/mautadite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>AU where Asha is the Greyjoy taken as a ward/hostage to Winterfell. How does this change Asha?</i>
</p><p>Asha Greyjoy, coming out of the water, going into the woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whose Woods These Are

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Netgirl_y2k](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/gifts).



> Written for round seven of the GOT Exchange. Prompt as seen in first part of summary.
> 
> I fiddled with Asha and Theon’s ages a bit, (as well as a few other minor canon details) but all other ages/dates remain the same. A billion thanks to holyshiznits on LJ for the quick and extremely helpful beta. This is rated for mild violence and some sexual content.
> 
> Please enjoy.

They hide tucked beneath the winding staircase beforehand, breaths held tightly in the unlit gloom. Fuel and torches are sparse, with few to be spared for the little hall that houses the entrance to Lord Balon’s solar in the Sea Tower, where the damp seeps deep and the waves crash about below. Asha keeps her hand pressed tight across Theon’s mouth to muffle his coughs when they come. He’d begged to be taken with her when she snuck out, and so he was, bundled up against the cold.

The King’s coming is heard before it is seen. Asha makes them smaller, clutches her little brother and presses a finger to her lips to signal for quiet. Of the boots that go thumping up the twisting stairs to the solar, raining dust and rot upon their heads, they recognise none, but two of the voices stand out.

“—be fine, Ned, gods take you. You worry too much.”

“You worry not enough, Your Grace. The boy is ill; I saw it plainly when I spoke him and the girl. Only a cough, perhaps, but a sea voyage—”

A faint echo comes back, and then nothing, only the footsteps of their guard as the King and the Stark Lord rise higher on the stairs. Asha waits it out; two, three minutes of careful watching and listening before she gives her brother a tense smile, receives an uncertain one in return, and steals up the stairs on bootless feet. Luck is on her side; they haven’t troubled to close the door, and voices start wafting down before she’s reached the top of the staircase.

The edge of annoyance in Robert’s voice is ever whetting itself.

“—already being damned charitable enough as it is. He bends the knee, I let him keep his head, he lets you keep his heir. It’s what we agreed on.”

“Yes, his _heir_. Contemptuous as you might be of the practice—” Here, Stark raises his voice to break through Robert’s growl, and Asha pads up a few further stairs. “—the Ironmen ascend as the Dornish do, they have ever since the Conquest. Asha Greyjoy is next in line for rule of the Iron Islands.”

Hearing it from the mouth of a stranger does little to make the reality less foreign to Asha. Thirdborn, a maid, princess for a time, and now Balon Greyjoy’s heir. She has hardly had time to swallow the fact that her older brothers are gone, far less to contemplate that a new world has opened up, one in which she might one day sit upon the Seastone Chair.

“I’ll not leave the old squid with a son to poison ‘gainst my kingdom and hatch new treacheries,” Robert is saying. “Don’t speak to me of taking a _girl_ as hostage when there’s the boy to be had; it is folly.”

There is a note of warning in Ned Stark’s voice; respectful and courteous, but there nevertheless.

“Leave the girl here, and you leave her to be groomed into warriorhood and rule. Take the boy north, and we risk losing him to sickness on the seas or cold in Winterfell. His spot of illness is regrettable, but must be taken into account. Perhaps if we waited it out…”

“I’ll do no such thing.” The King sounds both offended and enraged. “Unless another fool on one of these scanty rocks desires to rise up and feel the bite of my hammer, we raise anchor two days hence. It’s past time we left; I can hear the whores in King’s Landing clamouring for my return.”

A light drum of laughter pulses around the room, notably bereft of Stark’s voice. 

“I thought as much. Your Grace, the risk is too great. If the boy is to succumb to sickness, we will not find Balon Greyjoy amenable to handing over his only surviving child—”

“Fuck his amenability!”

“—and _furthermore_ , it sits not well with me to wager with the life of the boy, to knowingly put him in danger. It must be the girl, Robert.”

The thunder of water on rock sounds ominous and low in the short silence that follows.

“The Others take you and your stubbornness, Ned Stark,” the King swears. “Whoever heard of taking a maid as a hostage? How old is the kraken’s daughter?”

“Almost ten and two, Your Grace,” a drawling voice chimes in, one that Asha does not recognise. “And already wielding an axe, if you’re to believe the tales. They had to pry it from her fingers when they came for her and the mother and the boy.”

Asha swallows around her anger, forcing down the bile and wishing she could make their laughter disappear just as quickly. She has never wished more fervently for steel between her fingers.

“And this is what you want to take home with you, Ned? A wild little squid, to raise hell in your halls?”

“Needs must.” There is a strange note in his voice now. Reluctance, almost. “Truth be told, Your Grace, I have only seen Balon Greyjoy with his children once, but it was enough. He favours the girl, or cares hardy a whit for a boy, or both, perhaps. She is the one whose leaving will hurt him most. Her absence should be enough to keep him in check.”

One wrong move, and she’ll be found out. Asha takes a step back, onto the stair below, and frowns. They have said her name, yes, but it is hard to believe that it is truly of her that they speak. Their words ring true enough; it is not what troubles her, at this moment. It is that she can slowly but unmistakably feel the earth moving, tilting at the behest of the greenlanders who’d defeated her father. Rock is not supposed to move. It stands firm against the howling of the wind.

Asha feel curious and cold, and Robert Baratheon grunts.

“Fair enough. The girl, if you must.”

The talk moves on to other matters. Asha spends a moment suspended on the stair, listening to them quibble about Balon’s lateness, before she turns around.

Theon is standing there, blankets forming a thick cocoon around him, and he some new-born butterfly with his pale face and dark hair sticking out of it. Asha’s heart feels like it is thudding in her toes as she looks at her little brother. He smiles at her, uncertainly.

~~~

Asha says goodbye to her mother while her father rages in the chamber adjacent. Alannys Greyjoy holds back tears that Asha knows she will let spill afterwards. She’s inherited her mother’s long face and her thick skin, and doesn’t let herself cry either. There is no moisture in her, anyway. Asha makes herself hard.

“You go with a corner of my heart,” her mother says, kissing her forehead. “Come back with it.”

Theon waits for her by the door, feeling better, but still runny-nosed and coughing, still smiling unsurely. She’s not sure how much of the conversation with the King he had overheard. He’d been several steps lower than her, and it is possible the voices might have been too low for him, but Asha is quickly learning to take the worst into account, even when she does not assume it. She stoops to hug him fiercely, ready for the question.

“Is it my fault that—”

“Hey. Who knows when next you’re going to see me? Let’s not spoil the goodbye with stupid questions, okay?” Asha ruffles his hair briskly, dark like hers. “I’m going because they say I must. Nothing to do with you.”

His eyes glisten unsurely.

“When are you going to come back?” he asks.

Asha swallows. She likes to think of her brother fat-cheeked and laughing, wriggling away from her as she drops fish down the front of his shirt, begging her to lend him a throwing axe. To imagine him living and surviving under their father without her there is… unpleasant, all of a sudden.

Smiling tightly, she bounces her fist off his nose.

“When they say I can, I guess.”

Balon doesn’t say his farewells until she is astride the pony that will bear her down to Lordsport. Grey rubble and stone from the fallen southern tower litters the path; Pyke behind her is sad and broken. Her father never does actually say the word goodbye; her Baratheon and Stark guard is only a few paces away, and to them, he will betray no sentiment.

“Asha, my daughter.” He holds his chin up, welds his sunken eyes to hers. Though the Driftwood Crown has been cast off his brow, everything about her father seems heavier, denser. Asha straightens, holding her mount in check with hands that only shake slightly. Salt is thick on the air.

“My lord father.”

His thin, gloved hand makes a fist, one that she’s seen many a time before. Now, it presses against her father’s chest with an echoing thump.

“What is dead may never die.”

It is an oath, but from Balon Greyjoy it sounds like an order. Asha mirrors the gesture, her hand closing in around softening calluses and hard scabs.

“What is dead may never die,” she returns, and lets the vow sink into her skin.

~~~

She tells herself that she won’t look back. It is the first broken promise.

 _Rob’s Hammer_ is not the first ship that Asha has been on, but it is the largest. She knows what Pyke looks like, coming back from a journey, but she has never looked on as it receded in her eyes, shrinking like a dead starfish in the sand. The Iron Islands are her home, her only port, and it had never occurred to her to _want_ to look back, so constant and ineffable was the certainty that she would always know what it looked like, that she would always return.

As the King’s war galley bears her away from her home, she resolves to think of it as any other fishing trip, any other visit to Harlaw or Ironman’s Bay or the Flint Cliffs. She won’t look back, because she knows what she’ll see; Pyke, a grey stone in the midst of a smoky orange sunrise, waiting for her as always. Walking straight-backed and casual behind the strangers that lead her to her cabin, she looks everywhere but over the stern. She’ll be back. No need to know what it looks like as it disappears, as long as she never forgets the vision of those grey cliffs coming into sight.

Water prickles behind her lids as she blinks them closed. Asha waits until she’s safely ensconced in the tiny cabin room before flinging down her case and rushing to the porthole, her promise slipping down the backs of her legs to be trod underfoot. It is a mistier day than usual, but it’s not too late to pick out the hard outlines of Pyke’s cliffs and towers in the morning fog, though it takes considerable twisting and craning of her neck. She swallows. 

There is an old gammer’s tale, passed down through wives and saltwives and all kin to strong-fisted ironborn men: the Drowned God revels in tears. He takes the saltwater from a man’s eyes as freely as he’ll give it, and to He who was born anew with salted liquid in his lungs, tears are as sweet as wine, and fill up his halls to make him strong. Suffering is his boon, pain his sacred oath; they give him life and joy.

Pyke grows fainter and fainter, as do the other isles around it, and once more, Asha keeps her tears in check, squeezing her eyes shut. The Drowned God has a fresh crop of widows and orphans to milk for his salty sustenance, but he’ll wrest not a drop from a kraken’s daughter. She will need to keep all of her strength to herself.

~~~

For all her care, she expects to be caught, but perhaps not quite so quickly. They are five days out at sea, and every mile is a lesson and a wrench. Asha keeps to herself, imagines taking a dagger to someone’s knee for each muttered remark about women and bad luck on the seas, speaks only when spoken to, and tries not to be around very much to be spoken to at all.

That, she cannot avoid entirely. Ned Stark had exchanged a few soft, grave words with her on shore, assuring her continued protection and gentleness with a pointed little ‘except if’ hanging unsaid amidst it. Now, he has taken to seeking her out at least once every day. He hardly ever seems to know what to say to her, usually defaulting to quiet enquiries after her health and an awkward hand hovering near her shoulder, never alighting.

“Tell me, or Jory, or Ser Rodrik of you have need of aught,” he always ends with. She “yes, my lord”s him with her eyes tacked to her shoes; her uncle Victarion had always been fond of complaining about her overly insolent regard. Ned Stark takes it to mean that she is afraid of him, which does not please him, but suits him well enough, she thinks. 

When they part, and Asha is convinced that he’ll not come looking for her once again, she heads back to her tiny cabin and her axes within it. She practises a little bit every day: slices, flips, catches, upstrokes, two-handed swings. The yardmaster at Pyke often praised her for prowess matching her father’s when he was her own age, but all that strength had availed her naught when the King’s men had come for her mother and brother. She’d only managed to injure one of her captors, and only just barely at that. What she needs is speed and skill and stealth.

No magic will bring them to her by the time they land at Seagard, but it is good to have the sturdiness of the wood between her hands, good to feel the ache in her arms after an evening of tireless drilling. It is no easy task, with no target but for empty air, but there is no hope of finding someone willing to spar with the irongirl on this ship, and nothing to hack at that won’t lead to discovery almost immediately.

So alone she remains, a skinny girl with her axes. She favours an old bearded blade, a relic from the armoury, one of the first she’d tried to practise with as a little girl. Not the best weapon, but one that she can look at without the kind of nostalgia that brings water to her eyes.

She is swinging it at an imaginary southron knight on the day Ned Stark enters her cabin after his usual courteous knock. Asha knows she is caught when the door starts swinging open, and to attempt to hide now would make her appear guilty, so instead she turns to face her guardian, and sees as his brow creases and dips. She watches him watch her in silence.

“They did not search your case,” he says at last, sighing. Asha shakes her head no, thinking that he sounds much as he did when he told Robert Baratheon that she was the key to bringing her father to his knees. Reluctant. Tired. “May I?”

Asha hands the axe over, handle first, and somehow expects to never see it again. Ned Stark tests the heft and the grip, and then raises an eyebrow politely.

“You are stronger than you look. This is no toy.”

“It was my father’s.” The lie slips out of its own accord, and Asha watches it go with curiosity, watches it settle with discomfort somewhere at the back of Lord Stark’s eyes. “When he was a boy. One of the first weapons he used to train with. I just thought…”

“I know, child.” He turns the weapon over in his hand, looking at it mildly. He keeps looking at it even as he poses his next question. “Do you have any others?”

Asha roots out her throwing axes, but leaves her dagger where it lies, flat and cold near the top of her thigh. Lord Stark takes them from her gently.

“I’ll leave these with Ser Rodrik for the time being. I think that would be best.”

His tone seems to imply that she has a choice, but she knows that he is only being polite. Asha nods, and watches him walk away with her steel. Weeks later, on the road to Winterfell, the aged knight with her dead brother’s name returns them, as promised. The old bearded axe is not encased in the leather knapsack that the old knight presents her with, though there seems to be space for it. Asha never asks.

~~~

A raven had been sent ahead, Asha knows, but one glance at Lady Stark’s face on the steps to the Great Keep tells her that its information had been a bit lacking. Her recovery is swift, however; spousal kisses are exchanged, introductions are made, brief explanations are given, and the Lady Catelyn is as gracious as can be expected of any highborn woman presented with a travel worn, messy-haired, gangly ward. Asha tries to smile as she curtsies, but she thinks it turns out as more of a grimace.

There are two small children hovering nearby. Lady Catelyn introduces one, Lord Stark the other. The young redheaded lordling watches her with barefaced fascination and a smile that he probably gives to everyone without thinking aught of it. The bastard — _my natural son_ , Lord Stark had said, as if it softened what everyone knew — observes her more quietly, guardedly, but with a friendly enough expression. Asha immediately dismisses them in her mind, even as she says something about how good it is of them to welcome her.

Her skin prickles. It is the feeling of weightiness, of every eye being upon her, of everyone listening: servants, guardsmen and lordlings alike. Winterfell’s walls are high, everything seems green and yet grey and she already feels a chill. Asha shakes it off with a vicious shiver. If it is cold now, it will only get colder.

A servant soon leads her to the room that is to be her own. Asha spies Lady Catelyn murmuring something into the girl’s ear before they head off, and spends the walk there wondering what part of the castle her first impression has bought her.

“My lady,” the girl says, dipping her head to gesture her through a thick oaken door. The room stands in a quiet wing of the great grey keep, and is pleasantly warm after the faint bite of the early summer air. The window looks out onto a small courtyard where dogs roam and servants bustle about. A tall evergreen, thick with vines that creep across branches to thicken the stone walls, stands a foot or so away from the window. A jumpable distance.

“I’m no lady,” Asha replies belatedly when she turns to find the maid still there. “You can just call me…” She cuts herself off, and laughs like a bark. “I suppose it doesn’t matter what you call me. Asha, or whatever you please.”

The girl nods and murmurs assent in a way that says she’ll do no such thing, and then dips a curtsy and leaves. Asha sits on the bed and curls and uncurls her fingers until they bring up her case.

~~~

In the first few weeks, she receives several invitations to take tea with the Lady Catelyn. Asha is not stupid; she goes to them all.

The first time, two days after their arrival, she walks out of her room in clean woollen breeches and a belted shirt before pausing to wonder if she has erred. The men’s clothing could be taken as a slight, even if it isn’t meant as such. It was her custom on Pyke. A small voice whispers that she’s not on Pyke anymore; Asha squashes it, bites her bottom lip fiercely, and continues walking after the maidservant, lengthening her strides to catch up.

Younger than her own mother, but standing straighter and prouder, Lady Catelyn pats the cushioned seat next to her in the sitting room of her chambers. If she thinks aught amiss with Asha’s garb, her handsome features guard it well. Asha greets her courteously, and tries not to feel uncomfortable. If discomfort awaits her here in Winterfell, a sunny sitting room with a tray of tea and biscuits standing before her will not be the worst of it.

“How do you fare, child?”

The woman’s eyes are a pretty, shifting blue. Like water, but not limpid; strong.

“Very well, my lady.” Asha hears her voice, and almost scowls at it. She tries to sound more convincing. “Everyone has been very kind.”

Lady Catelyn sips her tea with saucer in hand. The softness in her eyes is not pity, but it wants to put Asha at ease nonetheless. Asha refuses; she leaves her drink untouched.

“We will all strive to be nothing but. I’ll tell you no lies, Asha.” She looks straight at her, and like everyone else, doesn’t say what they all know. Again, here it feels like less of an omission, more of a kindness. “But I do know well at least one of the feelings you’re experiencing right now. A southron woman in the north—”

“I’m not from the south,” she blurts out. The Lady Catelyn raises a brow, but smiles, easily.

“You are to them. Any map will tell you; your Iron Islands fall south of the Neck. You’re as much of the south as I am, and I want your time with us to see you well.”

Asha masters her lips this time.

“My lady is very kind.”

“Your lady is only practical.” The smile and the not-pity are still there. “Did Lady Alannys employ a septa on Pyke?”

Asha nods. Lady Catelyn sips her tea again, giving Asha a sweeping look, as if for the first time acknowledging that what she’s wearing is not quite proper.

“You saw little of her.” It is not a question, but Asha nods in agreement anyway.

“Only once or twice in the last few years,” she volunteers, “and then only because she’s sister to the master-of-arms.” She expects outright disapproval for the admission, but none comes. Lady Catelyn is daughter to rivers, she remembers; this undoubtedly means she has even less love for Asha’s people than the northmen do, but it must also mean she knows something of their ways.

Lady Catelyn places her saucer onto the table.

“My lord husband will decide whether or not your other lessons will continue while you stay with us. In the interim, will you object to seeing Septa Mordane?”

 _Can_ she object to seeing Septa Mordane? Asha is sorely tempted to try, wanting to know if the thing that is not pity will shrivel, if the thing that is not contempt will grow. 

“I’m already very good at sewing,” she tries. “My lady.”

Catelyn Stark’s eyes turn sharp, but her voice is still kind.

“There are other things for a lady to know,” she returns. “Asha.”

To that, she has no reply. She gives what she considers to be her least insolent shrug, and watches Lady Catelyn watch her, until Asha’s mouth twists and she nods.

The Lady of Winterfell smiles softly as she picks up her teacup.

“Take a biscuit, child,” she says in a voice that rings mildly, reminding Asha that whatever else she might be, Lady Catelyn is also a mother. Asha’s hands are still itching. She takes a biscuit.

~~~

“Krakens eat wolves, you know.”

“Only if they go in the water. Why would a wolf go into the sea? I don’t think they like fish…”

“Your father caught himself a trout.”

“Haha, no he didn’t! Father doesn’t fish.”

Asha sighs, and plants her hands on her hips. The godswood is a good place to come with her throwing axes, if she keeps away from the pools and comes at the height of day, when the guard around this part of the castle is light. It is a huge place to be ensconced within castle walls; a veritable forest that belongs to no man. She knows she can only go for so long without being caught again, but her new shadow ever seeks to accelerate the process.

“Alright, I was wrong. Your father doesn’t fish.”

His father doesn’t do much at all; not where Asha can see, in any case. She sees little of Lord Stark. Here, the land doesn’t shift, and there’s a different sort of cold in the air; thinner, warmed and unsalted, but otherwise, they might still be on that boat, drifting across the Sunset Sea, bearing Asha away from her home.

“But then why did you say he does?” Robb Stark presses, and trots closer to her, trampling on leaves red and green alike.

Asha sighs again, frowning down at him and his mop of red curls. The only thing she _hasn’t_ said to the boy is “you are small and I don’t like you”, because she’s not sure it wouldn’t earn her needless and annoying censure. She’s also not sure of how true it is. Eddard Stark’s young heir is one of the few in Winterfell who don’t tiptoe around her, pretend she isn’t there, whisper things both foul and true about the Ironborn. Asha knows that it’s because he’s only little and doesn’t know anything, but something about him is very like Theon. 

The resemblance gives her a reason to like him, but also a reason to not want to look at him very much. A raven had come from Pyke two weeks before: curt tidings from her father, a hurried note of love from her mother, and no news of anyone else.

“Go on with you,” she says, tapping her foot. “Jon Snow still can’t be ill, can he? Go play with him.”

“He _can_ still be ill, and he is. Old Nan says I’m not allowed in to see him.” Robb frowns like only a six year old can. “I tried to get Sansa to sneak in with me, but she was too scared.”

Unsurprising; she is three.

“So you gave up and came to pester me?”

“I didn’t give up! Only Jory caught me, and so…”

“And so you came to be eaten by a kraken,” Asha finishes for him. She walks away without warning, hopping over the thick roots in her way, delving deeper amongst the trees the northmen pray to as they rain their handsome leaves upon her head. Robb scrambles after her, slipping on the damp grass.

“I didn’t come into the water,” he points out, puffing away good-naturedly. “You came into the woods.”

Asha gnashes her teeth. She didn’t come; she was brought to these woods and to this castle and to this land, but she doesn’t say any of that, because then that would be arguing the point.

“Can’t you go cling to your mother’s skirts?” she asks instead. Robb has started to jog a little, and Asha rolls her eyes, slowing down with some reluctance.

“Mother and baby Arya are sleeping, and I mustn’t bother them. They need their rest.” He parrots it like the lecture that it is; she imagines he’s heard it many times by now.

“And I don’t need my rest?”

“You don’t come here to rest. You come here to play with your axes.”

When Asha stops, Robb bumps right into her, and falls back onto a clump of leaves. Turning, she looks down at him. He has a child’s eyes, wide and guileless, and for a moment, Asha is angry at him; angrier at him than at Ned Stark with his oppressive silences, at Septa Mordane for having her measured for those stupid dresses she’ll never like, at her own father for waiting ten entire turns to send a raven. He’s sprawled on the ground and she doesn’t even have her one little secret anymore and she’s more annoyed than she’s allowed herself to be in ages.

Then, of course, Robb smiles at her.

Asha scowls, and lends him a hand. He gets to his feet with six year old energy, and brushes away leaves from his trousers.

“I’m not playing, I’m training,” she informs him brusquely. “Have you told anyone?”

Robb shakes his head, still smiling.

“No. Can I watch you?”

She turns away, and doesn’t answer his question, only tugs him along by the hand she still grasps.

“Keep up. If you fall again, someone’s going to find a way to blame it on me.”

~~~

The day Jon turns seven is the day he and Robb start their formal sword training with Ser Rodrik. Coincidentally, it’s also the day Mikken sends word that her new axe is ready, and the day the ninth pimple crops up on Asha’s cheek. Asha glares at the looking glass in muted displeasure, then scrapes her hair back in resolution, secures it by her neck, and heads down to the smithy.

She’s a while in getting there. The first two kitchen boys who throw snickers at her back as she passes the Great Hall are easily ignored; harder to do so with the stable boy who calls her ‘frogface’ and attempts to trip her up. He’s tall, but skinnier than she is, and Asha knows it won’t take much to have him on his stomach, squealing for her. It’s high noon though, and she’s had almost three years of knowing better, so she memorises his face and leaves him be.

Asha still has to suffer through some suggestions for remedies, kindly and malicious alike (“Bathe your face in lemon and honey, sweetling, that’ll do the trick.” – “Have ye tried growing your nose a little bigger? The wens’ll run right away from it, they will! Hah! Haha!”) before she makes it to Mikken and her new weapon. Lord Stark is waiting there as well, but she had expected as much. She offers them both her politest greeting, and tries not to look too hungrily at the axe in her guardian’s hand.

“Asha.” Lord Stark is serious as always; the stern line of his mouth seems to forbid smiling, never mind attempting the action itself. Nevertheless, Asha stands straighter in response to her name, hands clasped cheerfully behind her back. Mikken grins, and even Lord Stark seems somewhat amused. “You are impatient, but I’ll have to deny you your desire for just a few minutes longer. Ser Rodrik told me he spoke to you?”

“He did, my lord.” At length. “I would be happy to learn all that I can of the sword from him, but I would count myself even luckier to have my skill with the axe further honed by whatever he has to teach.”

She’s very proud of herself, frankly; she had practised saying that for almost an hour, checking herself for sincerity and emotion. Of course, she _is_ sincere; to have castled-forged steel between her fingers again, to wield it supervised and not just with some trees and a living shadow for company, would be as sweet as wine.

“Even after all this time without practising?”

“Even so,” she says with a straight face. He knows about her throwing axes, even if he has yet to ever see them fly. He returned them to her, and if there had been an unspoken agreement about not wielding her favoured weapons, then Asha cannot regret going against it.

“Mikken was kind enough to fashion you a wooden version as well, that you can practise with when necessary.”

Asha grins her appreciation to the burly blacksmith, and receives a wink in return.

“I cannot express my thanks enough, Lord Stark.”

Her eyes rest in the vicinity of his chest, as is her wont when she speaks to him of late, but after a few moments of silence, Asha flicks her eyes up impatiently. She is just in time to catch his thoughtful gaze, before he offers her the axe, handle first.

“Think nothing of it, child.”

Asha reaches out with one hand, but quickly realises her mistake, and grasps the weapon with two. The long, sturdy handle is dark and simple, some northern wood that she cannot yet recognise. The steel gleams dark and fierce, untested and sharp. It is wonderfully heavy. Lord Stark nods when he sees that she has noticed. Mikken wanders off to another part of the smithy, and Asha’s guardian stoops before her.

“I had Mikken make it with the woman that you shall become in mind. You will grow into the heft, just as you grow in skill and competence. I do not need to tell you that this is no toy. You know as well as I do that an axe is a weapon, as is a sword, as is a bow: a tool for death and justice. If this is what you choose, I wish you as much luck as I do my own sons. And I hope that when you take up this axe, you swing it for all the right reasons.”

His voice has a strange sort of echo to it, a reverberating chill that seems to bounce off weapons old and new that hang upon the walls. Asha’s mouth feels full of salt.

“Of course, Lord Stark. I understand. Thank you.”

The Lord of Winterfell regards her closely a moment longer, then clasps her shoulder, getting to his feet.

“Go along, Asha. Ser Rodrik will be waiting.”

A few weeks later, Lord Stark rides north to bring justice to three wilding raiders who’d come down over the Wall. Asha rides with him and his entourage. The man that passes the sentence must wield the sword, but bearing it is something else altogether, it seems. Asha holds Ice for the first time, feels its almost impossible lightness, nicks her palm unthinkingly against the edge of Valyrian steel. Lord Stark shows her show to bring it forward when asked, smiles in that plain-faced way he has, and tells her not to be nervous. Her chin points forward, and she swears not to, swears it to Lord Stark and to herself.

That promise, Asha breaks, and she hates herself for it.

~~~

For her fifteenth nameday, Robb and Jon put on a play.

A play, in any case, is what Sansa dubs it, sitting in the place of honour next to Asha on the boxes laid out in the godswood. Robb and Jon insist that it is a magnificent show of swordsmanship. Asha calls it a chance to laugh at two little lordlings, which is a grave mistake, for she then has to listen to protests and boasts of how they aren’t little at all, almost men grown by now! Arya doesn’t call it anything at all, charging in with sticks every now and then to join the fray, before she falls into Hodor’s lap for an impromptu nap. When it’s done, Sansa claps loudest of all, Jeyne right behind her, and Asha thanks them graciously, promising that if they continue as is, they’ll one day be about a quarter as good as she is.

There’s a sticky little moment afterwards, when Arya treads mud onto Sansa’s favourite shawl, and Sansa pulls her hair, and tears seem inevitable all around. But then Robb steps in, kisses Sansa’s cheek, washes the shawl in the stream and spreads it out to dry, ruffles Arya’s hair and hands her off to Jon to be tickled and teased. He leaves Sansa and Jeyne soaking their feet in a pool, and Hodor nodding off to sleep.

Asha whistles as he approaches her.

“Deftly handled, Ser Eldest,” she drawls, chin resting on her fisted hand. Robb laughs a little, rubbing a hand behind his head. 

“Me and Jon are both the eldest, when you think about it.”

That was Robb’s way. With Jon, he would crow gleefully about the few months that separated them, but to anyone else, it was obvious that he loved being as close in age to his brother as he was in everything else.

“Well, you are eldest and heir.”

Robb shrugs again.

“Something we have in common.” He isn’t looking at her, but chances a peek when the sentence is said. Asha huffs, and buries a hand into his curls, shaking his head about playfully. 

“Except I was meant to be neither,” she reminds him.

“…Do you miss them?”

He could be speaking of anyone: her parents, brothers dead and living, the Ironborn. She turns her answer into another shake of his head, tunnelling both her hands in his hair and tickling him about the ears so that he doesn’t look at her face.

“I do,” she says. It is the simplest answer.

Supper that night, as always, is a slightly nicer affair than usual. Asha wears the simplest of the dresses made for her, but secures her daggered belt to it. Gage prepares a berry tart with cream, and Lord Stark makes his way down to her place himself to fill up her goblet with some southron wine. A few cursory presents are handed over, and Asha says her thanks respectfully.

Her last gift is passed down to her as the dessert is being carried away; Asha looks back the way it came, and sees Lady Stark inclining her head gently.

“My thanks, Lady Stark, Lord Stark,” she raises her voice to call down, for more often than not, their gifts come as one. She opens it there at the table, as she did all the others, and doesn’t let her surprise show through.

Sansa squirms in her seat and begs for a spritz, which Asha delivers while Robb laughs and ribs her. Later that night, in her room, she inspects the packaging and the bottle. Inexpensive, but fine, and made in Lys. She’d very much wanted to sail to the Free Cities, as a girl.

The gift remains at the back of her vanity, but Asha takes it out every now and again when she’s alone, to pull out the stopper and breathe in the fragrance. Perfume is a lady’s thing, and of little use to her, but Asha has always liked the scent of azaleas.

~~~

After about twenty minutes of excited chattering and a lot of firm manhandling that should have been far beyond the strength of seven year old maids, Asha stops trying not to wince.

“The agreement was that you would coif my hair,” she reminds them, leaning left towards Jeyne’s brush, “not play tug-of-war with it.”

The original arrangement, indeed, had been that the girls could _brush_ her hair before Ser Rodrik expected her down in the yard, but Sansa had managed to wheedle her into staying where put for more. And she’s not the first to fall prey to Jeyne and Sansa’s whims, Asha knows; Sansa’s chambermaid’s curls are piled atop her head instead of around her shoulders as usual, and Old Nan is sporting a tiara made of wildflowers around her wimple.

“We shan’t be another minute,” Sansa says, with such a credible approximation of soothingness that Asha has to chuckle. She tugs Asha’s head a bit to the right, lips between teeth as she tries to wrangle three handfuls of hair into a braid. “You’ll be a princess in no time at all.”

She’d interrupted the first few times, at this juncture; now she lets their little argument play out. Jeyne tugs Asha back to the left as she frowns, twirling a lock of her hair around something wooden.

“Old Nan was the princess, remember? Asha is going to be the pirate girl.”

“Why can’t we have two princesses?”

“Why can’t we have a pirate girl?”

“Pirates,” Sansa sniffs, abandoning the braid for another one, trying to work a flower stem into it, “are dirty and mean, and we can’t have them in the castle with the queen and her heirs.”

Asha’s mouth twists wryly.

“Well… Asha can be a clean and nice pirate, can’t she?” Jeyne sucks her bottom lip, trying to work a twig into her hair. “Can’t you?”

“Asha can be whatever she pleases,” she announces at last, and reaches up to gently tug their little hands away. “And at present, she would like to be learning the finer points of poking men with sharp things. Aren’t you two done yet?”

The look that passes between the pair of them is clue enough. Asha stands and strides over to the looking glass, and then spends a minute or so laughing at what she sees there. Knots and twigs on one side, tangles and flowers on the other. A little seaweed here, a bit of driftwood there, and she could be both pirate and princess. If her father could see her…

Asha’s smile falters, and quirks to the side. If Balon Greyjoy could see her, he would say a prayer for a dead daughter, and curse her for a stranger. 

There are hands pulling on her shirttails.

“Should we finish?” Sansa asks, hopefully. Asha grins down at her, and Jeyne on her left, who looks at her with less charm and more trepidation.

“You’re keen to make me late, are you? But the pair of you have my thanks, anyway; you’ve given me an idea.” She points. “Here, pass me those shears.”

Fifteen minutes later, Asha presents herself to Mikken at the forge, showing dimples as deep as she can. There are snippets and locks of her hair all down her back and front, and the bulk of the rest of it is gone. She waves the pair of scissors at him jauntily. The blacksmith sighs, and tells her to sit on a bench before he changes his mind.

He evens it out much better than Asha could have, and even is all she wants. Asha tucks what’s left of her hair behind an ear later that evening, as Lord Stark frowns and Lady Catelyn sighs, staring down at her from the rampart that overlooks the yard.

“She’s a pirate girl, my lord,” Jeyne calls up helpfully.

“A princess,” Sansa argues.

~~~

Asha is ten and eight the first time she hits a man; really hits him with her own fist, holding nothing back, hurting him as much as it hurts her and it’s fucking _wonderful_ to feel so fierce. Slipping out of Winterfell is hard enough, but it is worth the thrill of talking her way into her first tavern, her first pint of warm, stale-tasting ale, her first brawl.

The man goes down like a stone, taking the skin off Asha’s knuckles with him. One of his comrades, shaggy-haired and lurching, is drunk enough or loyal enough to pick up the issue on his behalf.

“Where’s it you’ll be wantin’ m’ boot, then? In your face or up your arse?”

This will require being careful, she knows. She wears a hood, a cloak, and enough smudge on her cheeks to pass for a youngster’s beard in the low light, but it doesn’t make for much of a disguise. And if more than a few of the patrons are passably skilled, her two hidden daggers won’t make for much of a defence. But the bravado sticks to her bones, and Asha does very much want to hit someone again.

“No need to go through the trouble,” she rasps. “If you want to get rid of your boots, just let ‘em get a whiff of your stench, and they’ll shrivel right up. Just like your cock already has, I reckon.”

His roar of anger genuinely delights her. He’s big, but he’s slow, and Asha takes him down amidst a gale of laughter and jeers from behind. By the time the owner of the establishment pushes her out through the back, she’s acquired a few promises of drinks and broken knees, and a blonde tagalong barwench who fits herself snugly against Asha’s front, and kisses her with a chapped, ale-tasting mouth as they stumble away.

Asha’s taken by surprise, but not for a fool; she doesn’t let the woman lead her away from the lit alleyways, and checks her for weapons under the guise of cupping and caressing her breasts, stomach, thighs. The wench breaks away and grins. It’s a pretty one, despite the gap in it.

“Who says I’m going to pinch your purse?” she asks, in a tone that one could take for displeasure, but for the way she wriggles against Asha, her bosom spilling out of her top.

“Why wouldn’t you?” she gives back, but kisses her again anyway, warmth breaking out all over her skin. Most of Asha’s firsts have already been taken by a shy stable hand with pretty lips back in Winterfell, but the hand disappearing into her breeches is new and good. When the barwench doesn’t find what she’s searching for, she hoots with laughter, her grin turning even more comely. She pushes back Asha’s hood, dragging a thumb sweetly down her dirt-smudged cheekbone.

“I can’t wait to tell Paul he had himself a _wench_ causing all that trouble,” she says with a saucy wink. “Drinking up his bad ale, pummelling those men to the floor.”

“I hope you _can_ wait,” Asha counters, more steadily than she would’ve thought herself capable. She traces the tip of a breast with her thumb. A few shacks down, a cat screeches, and Asha gets a toothy smile as the fingers begin to work, sliding down where she’s wet and warm.

Afterwards, the woman _does_ try to rob her, but it’s nothing more than she expected. Asha steals the dirk that had been concealed in her blonde locks and collects a last kiss before putting a few yards between them, and doing up her breeches.

“I forgive you,” says the barmaid cheekily, tipping her a wink as if she hadn’t just tried to stab her. Her blouse flutters in the cool air that manages to sweep down through the buildings, but she doesn’t trouble to close it up yet. “I’ll keep your little secret, too. I’ll be wanting to see you here again.” 

Asha touches the hood of her cloak in mock-gallant farewell, and disappears around the nearest corner, the vigour thick in her blood like iron. It was, doubtlessly, the stupidest and most careless thing she’s done in the past six or seven years, perhaps all her life. There is a kind of reckless exhilaration in doing something so foolish, and coming away unscathed.

She looks down at the captured dagger at she runs, melding with the shadows, and almost laughs. Nestled in the hilt of the weapon is a bright, fake bauble — not worth more than a few coppers, but surely a treasure for the barwench. 

Not _quite_ paying the iron price, then, but it’s as close as Asha will come.

~~~

“No,” Asha says shortly, and darts in with a two-handed swing, forcing Jon to raise his sword in defence. She takes advantage of the ensuing opening to tread hard on his instep, and even through his boot it’s enough to make him stumble backwards, yelping.

She grabs him by the front of his shirt before he can fall.

“You weren’t listening. Don’t forget: I’m taller than you and stronger than you.” She hauls him upright, raising a brow critically. “It does no good to pretend it isn’t the case; find ways _around_ it instead.”

It’s been said by Ser Rodrik before, but Asha knows the lesson bears repeating with most boys. Jon’s long face vacillates between a frown and a pensive look. 

“You won’t always be, though.”

“Hm?”

“Bigger and stronger than me.” He states it with the kind of pragmatism that she’s come to know him for. “I’m to be as tall as Father, at least.”

Asha rolls her eyes, chuckling, and pushes him back until he falls sitting onto one of the benches that rim the yard. Taking a seat beside him, she lays her wooden axe across her knees. 

“But you aren’t now, so stop being a child about it. No,” she continues, when he tries to get up, tugging him back down. “Sit still for a while.”

Jon leans back, and huffs in quiet frustration. Asha knows well its source. It’s been hours since the bells started tolling, but the yard is still all but deserted, and neither of them have seen any of the Starks since morning. There is an air of muted celebration all throughout the castle.

She looks on as Jon directs his frown towards the Great Keep.

“Patience, Snow,” Asha says before he can speak up. “You’ll see your new brother soon enough.”

Jon looks at his hands. They clench and unclench almost rhythmically. 

“Not as soon as you will. She likes you more than she does me.”

There’s nothing much to be said for that; Asha knows it to be true. The Lady Catelyn shows Jon no blatant rancour, but it is well known throughout Winterfell that she has no love for her husband’s bastard, whose own mother exists only in rumours and whispers. She is more than cordial to Asha, however, and still invites her to tea once every few moons. Asha accepts, more often than not. They are very different women, but their talks are always pleasant, and they’ve developed a rapport of sorts.

“ _Like_ might not be the best word to use,” she says finally. “When I first came here, she realised that we were outsiders in similar ways. We understand each other, I think.”

“How am I _not_ an outsider?” Jon protests quietly. Asha pulls at her lower lip. This isn’t something that he voices often, she knows.

“It’s not exactly the same, Jon,” she gives, without heat. The boy grunts. His grey eyes are stormy and his expression hard.

“It’s fine,” he says. “If you find that you have a lot in common with Lady Stark…”

“If I have so much in common with Lady Stark,” she interrupts, rising to her feet, “why am I not giving up my lovely summer afternoon to correct _her_ obviously inferior swordsmanship?”

A brief moment passes; Jon’s lips twitch. 

“Because she just gave birth to her fifth child?” 

Asha gives him the chuckle he wants, and looks down at him with her hands on her hips. His hands have formed small stone fists in his lap. Inaction isn’t what he needs now, she decides. The rest of the day will stretch long, and the bells are ringing still.

“Come, you know Robb will sneak the babe to you as soon as he is able, and you can have it piss all over you to your heart’s delight.” She offers him a hand when the reluctant smile finally appears. “Now get up, Snow, so I can knock you down again.”

Her words hang in the air a few seconds more, and then Jon takes her hand.

~~~

Arya’s footfalls thump up the stairs and speed down the hallway, so that Asha is aware of her coming as soon as she steps outside of her room. She sighs, and leaves her door slightly ajar so that Arya can slip in soundlessly. Minutes later, when Septa Mordane and a maid come bustling along, Asha points them down the hallway, which after a few turns leads out into the smaller courtyard housing the sept. The septa nods her thanks imperiously, and gathers up her skirts to continue the chase.

Asha waits a minute or so before slipping back into her room. Arya is sprawled out on her bed, arm around the wooden practice sword that lies there.

“Is there a _specific_ tree that I have to pray to for lying to a woman of the Faith,” she begins, mock wonderingly, “or will the old gods just strike me where I stand?”

Arya makes a ‘hmph!’ sound, but sits up, dragging the practice sword with her. She has to use both her skinny little arms to hold it and brandish it aimlessly about.

“She’s making me do _needlework_ again.” There’s the most plaintive sort of venom in her voice as she slashes at someone imaginary, and then frowns at the sword. “The one Jon lent me works better.”

Asha laughs, hopping up to sit on her windowsill. The evergreen growing outside of it rains its needles down into the courtyard with every gust of wind. She can hear Robb and Jon, a few towers over, practising their commanders’ voices, yelling to each other across the ramparts.

“A sword doesn’t _work_ ; it needs someone to wield it,” she reminds the girl dancing about her room. “And the septa is supposed to make you do needlework, it’s her duty.”

“Don’t have to be my duty to _learn_ it,” Arya grumbles. “I bet _you_ didn’t have to do needlework.”

“Would you? I’m glad; you’d lose that wager, and I’d have the coin to myself.”

Arya frowns, considering. There is much of her father’s face in her, but no one ever taught Eddard Stark’s eyes to twinkle so, or his lips to spread in uproarious laughter. 

“Warriors don’t need to know sewing!” Arya decides with a flourish, spinning round to attack a pillow. “They have their squires to do that, when things need mending and such.”

“Most knights spend quite a bit of time as squires,” Asha points out.

“Well… I’ll be so good, I won’t have to!”

Asha bites back her laugh, and watches as Arya tires herself out, spinning and thrusting to her heart’s content. She’s a tiny little stick of a girl, with a face that Jeyne likes to call horsey, for all its long solemnness. She reminds Asha of herself, on Pyke, when the only dress she would wear was a shift of chainmail, and there was nothing to fear from running about amidst the warriors in training, getting underfoot at the docks, playing with her dolls and axes and swords in the sea, making weapons out of whatever she could find.

Theon has taken up with a bow, her mother had written in a short addendum to an even shorter letter from her father. That had been moons ago. Asha wonders if Balon Greyjoy ever even reads the little lines her mother pens to her, or if Alannys adds them after the fact; hurried, secretive notes to _‘my daughter, my only daughter’_.

Arya flops down on the rug in the room’s centre, staring up at the ceiling. Wrinkles slowly crease their way into her forehead and nose, showing her to be deep in thought.

“What is it?” Asha asks, tossing a little fistful of pine needles in her direction. Arya rolls to face her, cupping her chin in her hands.

“Maester Luwin says that on the Iron Islands, women can have lands and hold titles and sail on ships and ride into battle.”

“Maester Luwin says right. The firstborn child inherits, not the first son.”

“How come?” She sounds indignant again. “We don’t do it like that here.”

“How come?” Asha draws a knee up to her chest. “Because Aegon the Conqueror allowed it, I suppose. When Harren the Black and all his sons roasted up in Harrenhal, and the Ironborn were driven back to their home islands, the leaders of the high houses among us were allowed to elect a new leader. At the time, Vicka Greyjoy and her bastard sons and daughters were foremost in our house. Whether it was because of our ties to the Grey King and to the old ruling House Hoare, or because Vicka’s strength was known all along the Sunset Sea, and she could sail and war and rule with the best of them, or—” She twists her lips dryly, snorting. “—because of some kind of feminine trickery, House Greyjoy was chosen. Aegon and his sisters had no reason to object, and probably thought nothing of Vicka’s request to allow the lands she ruled over to ascend like the Dornish do. The Drowned Priests crowned her Lady Paramount of the Isles, she had her bastards legitimised, squashed a few minor houses that rebelled, and that…” Asha pauses to sprinkle another little shower of needles over Arya, who had crept closer. “…was mostly that.”

Arya brushes them away absently, an awed, thoughtful little smile in place.

“I wish _I’d_ been born on the Iron Islands,” she says passionately. “Then nobody could tell me what to do. Will you take me there, some day?”

“It’s not that simple, wolfgirl—”

“ _Please_?”

The expression twisting her face runs somewhere between a childish pout and the fiercest frown. Asha’s lips twitch, gently. It has all the makings of another promise that she cannot keep.

“Alright. Some day.”

~~~

Jon is better at the game than Robb is, but only just. His serious face is wrought with concentration, staring down at his hand on the pockmarked table.

“Anyone can do it if you go that slowly,” Asha complains good-naturedly, and snatches the stone dagger out of Snow’s fingers. Robb, who had paused to watch his brother, turns his gaze on her as she spreads her fingers on the surface. He rubs his hand on his chin pensively, scratching at the emergent whiskers that he won’t admit to being ridiculously proud of.

“You’re just starting out, so don’t do the one I did,” Asha explains. “If every space is a number, then the simplest way would we to go from one to six, and then back down again.” She flicks the dagger once through each space between her fingers, going fast and making it looking more impressive than it really is. “See?”

“I bet even Bran could do that,” Jon protests, taking the blunt knife back. He pokes himself in a knuckle a few minutes later, and joins in when they laugh at him.

“You know, you can’t really call it a game if there’s no point to it,” Robb comments later, as he takes his turn. He takes Asha’s advice this time, and goes slower.

“Well, when you’re playing with a real knife with a real edge, the point is not to lose a finger,” Asha says, leaning back in her chair, arching a brow and cocking her head until he laughs. 

She sees his bent, though. The Iron Islands are brimming with inane challenges like pinfinger and the finger dance, where the only real rewards are to boast about being unscathed if you've won, or boast about being scarred if you haven't. The northern boys still think she’s taletelling about the uncle she’d never known, lost to the finger dance and an infection gone wrong.

She leaves them in Robb’s room as the day begins to fail, reminding them not to be daft and go too fast. One of those queer summer chills is upon the land, so she stops by her room for a cloak before heading into the town, to meet the pretty daughter of a crofter. The crofter’s son is pretty as well, but less cunning and wont to talk. Moreover, Asha mislikes the thought of having to look for a woods witch in Winterfell and environs, where everyone knows of or has seen the overly bold ironwoman, ward to Lord Stark these past eight years.

Sally prepares her a picnic by a lake, makes her laugh with a trick that she’d learnt from a passing mummer’s caravan, and sees her occupied into the night. Her hands are small, but warm, and very quick. Asha likes her mouth best, and the little gasping sounds she pulls from it when she kisses her ribs, and stomach, and lower.

It’s a long night, but too short nevertheless. Asha is back in Winterfell early next morning, saddling her mare for a ride to Hornwood with Lord Stark and his company. It will be a long trip, with little to do there but listen to talk of grain and fields and how suspiciously long the summer has been. But Daryn Hornwood is a good sort, and always has a smile and a jape to greet her with.

Robb meets her on the stairs going into the Great Keep on her way to collect her things. There’s a pack slung over his shoulder; he, Jon, Jory, Farlen and a few others are venturing out as well later in the day, into the Wolfswood to catch the scent of a boar. He walks with her for a spell, and when they’re hooded by a little alcove on a landing, he slips the stone dagger into her palm. Asha looks down at it.

“What?” she asks plainly as she watches the Stark heir try to stand straighter and mask his discomfort all at once.

“It’s nothing. We probably shouldn’t be risking our knuckles… and you know how Jon is.” His laugh is not insincere. “He wouldn’t stop trying until he had the art of it perfected, doing all those fancy sequences you showed us.”

Asha turns the knife over in her hand. Robb has an open, honest, all too likeable face, and it’s easy to suss out what he doesn’t say.

“Your father.”

Robb grimaces and sighs, but nods with it, rubbing the back of his neck.

“He is not angry, you’ve nothing to… it’s nothing. He just thinks it a foolish risk.”

Asha has yet to see Lord Stark this morning, except for glimpses from afar; she supposes they’ll be having a word about just how foolish it is. If nothing else, she’s glad for the warning.

“Stop looking so apologetic,” she demands, stooping to slip the dagger into her boot. “He fathered you both; he’d know better than me how inept you are or aren’t. It’s his duty to look after the state of your knuckles.”

Robb grins lightly, and when she tries to sink her hand into his hair to ruffle it, he knocks it away, ducking.

“You can still teach me the finger dance,” he calls after her as she strides up the stairs. “With… loaves, or something. You’re an expert at that too, right?”

Asha walks the rest of the way backwards to give Robb a lopsided smile. She judges herself fair enough at it, but not an expert, though she might have been, once. When Robert Baratheon’s warship had borne her away from Pyke all those years ago, she hadn’t yet graduated from practising with small knives and bits of wood, with Rodrik and Maron when they were of a mood to humour her. Now, both her older brothers are dead, the younger is all but a stranger to her, and she hasn’t attempted to dance like that in what feels like an age.

“Don’t get gored by a boar, Stark,” she advises instead of answering. Robb’s eyebrows draw in, but he laughs back.

“Don’t fall in the White Knife, Greyjoy.”

She makes a gesture like agreement, and puts her back to him again, climbing the stairs, and preparing the words she will give to his father. They burn on the way up through her throat, but Asha is becoming used to the chafe.

~~~

On nights when the Lord and Lady Stark are both away from Winterfell, someone is inevitably tasked with ferreting Bran out from whatever corner he’s adopted to avoid bedtime, carting him off to his room, and coaxing him to sleep. Somehow, tonight, it ends up being Asha who tosses the second littlest Stark onto the duvet, and sends for Old Nan when he restlessly pleads for a story.

“I’d like a new tale,” he insists when the little grey nursemaid is installed in a chair with her knitting things, and Asha is preparing to leave. “I know all the old ones by heart.”

“It’s time for fidgety little boys to be sleeping,” Old Nan chides in her whispery voice, “not making demands as he pleases. And I’ve told you, child; there is no such thing as a new story; only ones you’ve yet to hear, and ones that have changed.”

Bran shifts with six year old impatience, so much like a younger Robb. It occurs to Asha very suddenly that she’s seen all of the Stark children through the age of six, seen them grow up right before her eyes. Bran hadn’t even been alive on her arrival. And Theon, her own little brother, remains a perpetual seven year old shade in her mind.

“Fine,” Bran concedes, “one I haven’t heard yet.”

“I’ll see what this old brain can recall, then.” She clicks her needles in a very unhurried fashion. The torchlight highlights every wrinkle and every spot that colours her papery skin, even as the glow makes her seem livelier. “Would you like to stay a while, Asha?” Old Nan asks. “If I tell a tale of the Ironborn, you can correct my mistakes, and fill in the gaps.”

“Oho?” Asha grins a bit, leaning against the doorjamb. “You know tales of the Iron Islands?”

“Old Nan probably knows every story in the world,” Bran explains patiently.

“I don’t know about that. But I know some. I could tell you about the Grey King, and his lifelong rivalry with the Storm King, bloody and treacherous kingsmoots on Old Wyk, about Vicka the First and her unlikely rise to power after her distant cousin Harren defied the Conqueror, and paid the price in his tall dark hall. You know about Harrenhal, Bran. You like that one, I remember.”

Asha’s lips curve up again, seeing how Bran nods with wide, expectant eyes, transfixed. The old woman has a gift for the art of a tale; it’s in her trembling voice, her low pitch.

“You’ll have to tell me about this Aegon one day, Bran,” Asha says, standing straight. “I keep hearing about him; apparently he had some curious pets.”

“Not staying?” This from Old Nan, looking at her kindly over her knitting. Bran is already giving her a farewell wave; she returns it lazily.

“No, I think not. I like tales to be told of me, not to me.” Especially when they tell of her old home beyond the sea that Asha can’t say for sure that she’ll ever return to. “Goodnight Grandmother, Bran.”

The door closes with a murmur. Asha pauses for a while outside, listening to the cadence of the old voice as it starts up, warm and slow, rising, rising. There comes no other sound from within, neither from Old Nan’s needless, nor from the restless boy who attends her.

 _It must be a good tale_ , Asha thinks, and starts a slow stroll to her room.

~~~

She finds Sansa and Jeyne on the bridge between the armoury and the Great Keep, looking through the window at the boys training in the courtyard below. She’s dirt-stained and smelly from playing with Farlen’s smallest litter of pups, and Sansa sniffs politely when she sees her approaching. Asha has to bite back a laugh; Sansa has been sniffing at a lot, these days.

Jeyne doesn’t see her coming at all; she jumps and squeals to find Asha at her elbow. This time, her smile isn’t checked as easily, but she makes it a kind one, so that the girl knows she isn’t being mocked.

“Asha,” Jeyne says, smoothing down her hair with a frown that seems almost guilty. “I didn’t know that you’d returned.”

She smiles again, leaning against the stone. “Where am I meant to have gone?”

“I… I’m not… I don’t—”

And the girl turns as pink as a freshly boiled lobster, shaking her head until her brown curls toss about and catch the light. Next to her, Sansa sniffs again, sounding exasperated, and Asha arches a brow, flicking her eyes this way and that. She would almost say they’d been up to some mischief, if she didn’t know them both better.

“What?” she asks, slipping her thumbs into the waist of her breeches. They glance at each other again. “Come now, out with it.”

“It’s really nothing,” Sansa answers demurely, hands clasped in front of her. “We were just talking—”

“About me,” Asha finishes for her with glib amusement, and watches Sansa’s cheeks redden a bit as well. Her arms fold themselves over her stomach. “You’re not very good at being secretive. If you would have something of me, or know something of me, then there’s no better time to make it known.” She raises a brow, still smiling at the pair of them and their guilty faces. “Quick now, before it’s time for me to go down and knock your brothers about a bit.”

Her eyes rest on Jeyne, who bites her bottom lip before blurting it out.

“Sansa thinks that her lord father is going to marry you to Jon!”

“To Jon?” Asha’s laugh spills forward unchecked. “Jon Snow?”

Sansa sighs at Jeyne, but lifts her chin with quiet grace as she gives a delicate shrug.

“Jon indeed,” she says with greatest politesse. “It _is_ custom in the North for ladies to be at least betrothed by the time they're twenty, and Jon is kind and honourable, and you both get along so well, don't you?”

Asha laughs again. Her supposed future betrothed is down in the yard, matching Robb strike for strike as Ser Rodrik looks on, walking a wide circle about them. Jon pulls a clever feint, but his brother sees through it at the last moment and manages to escape a blow to his forearm. He calls out what might be a compliment or a jeer; they grin at each other all the same.

Wed to the bastard of Winterfell… it would be deftly done, if it is truly a design of Ned Stark’s. It would take Jon out of the North, far from the eye of Lady Catelyn, and ostensibly give them a claim to the Iron Islands through Asha. They might even seek to bring salt and rock under the rule of the North, as other Starks had done with Skagos and Bear Island.

But it’s far from being a concern to Asha. Jon is still half a boy, and Balon Greyjoy lives yet, with three brothers and a son to come after him. Ned Stark will not wed his son to his hostage, not when he might one day have need to rest her neck on a chopping block. And on the Iron Islands, it would never be borne. A greenlander could never sit upon the Seastone Chair, by proxy or no.

Her eyes flick back to the girls, who are still watching her, Jeyne with some trepidation, as if Asha is about to scold her for the bit of gossip.

“I think Jon would make a fine husband,” Jeyne says, with a helpful air. Asha raises a fist and bounces it gently off of her nose; Sansa tries to draw back before the same can be done to her, but Asha is too quick.

“I don’t want a fine husband,” she informs them succinctly, with a knifelike grin, “impressive as m’lord Snow may be. I want to have adventures.”

The assertion leaves them both dubious, that is clear enough, but Asha doesn’t stay to explain. She might have years and years more ahead of her, here in this place that was never meant to be her home, or she might not. Either way, Asha vows to see herself through them with her own hand, by her own rules, and that promise, she is going to keep.

*  
~~~

Robb thinks the deserter died bravely; Jon says he died choking on fear.

Asha says he died. Ice had parted his head from his body in one stroke, and he’d left the earth to greet whatever god or gods he held dear. The head had come up near her feet; she’d seen his face, rigid in death. _What is dead may never die_ , they said on the Iron Islands, and believed that fallen warriors descended beneath the waves to serve forever with the Drowned God in his flooded halls. But whatever the earless old black brother had believed, he no longer had a head to believe it with, not in this world.

She gives Ice a brief wipe down with a cloth she keeps near; Ned Stark will clean and oil his sword on his own later on, as is his custom. Asha only bears the Valyrian two-hander to him, and only on these occasions. It is easy to remember it, the shift in Lord Stark's eyes when he decided that if she thought herself warrior enough to wield an axe, handle a sword, she should well know the weight of the one that might one day end her life.

They are quick in gathering for the ride back; Winterfell lies long miles to the south. The three brothers gallop ahead, talking and jesting, Bran on his pony between his elders, struggling to keep up. A murky mirror of what Rodrik, Maron and Theon had never been. Her family is an ever-present shadow in her mind, of late. Asha thinks back to the dream she had the night before. Broken ships, an axe in a chair, and a little boy who looked like her brother, but smiled less.

Jory urges his steed next to hers.

“What has you looking so thoughtful?”

“This? This isn’t a thoughtful look; this is the cold pinching me.” Asha lets her grin reach her eyes. “Are we truly still calling this summer, when there’s snow on the ground?”

A laugh comes back in answer.

“You’ll see; when winter really comes, you’ll be praying for a few light summer snows.”

Asha snorts; she doesn’t doubt it. The North has yet to fully sink into her bones; the marrow she tells herself is still made of salt and wind and iron. She will never not be Ironborn; Asha knows that, but she also knows that having the Islands in her will never be the same as being on them herself. Her father’s letters have dwindled into nothing, but that had always been about to happen. Asha glances at Ned Stark’s back, covered in furs and leathers, and remembers hearing him argue to the King that taking her away would be the best course, that it would keep her father in check.

He’d been wrong; Balon Greyjoy adapted. But what is dead may never die, and Asha is iron in this to the last. Death was never an option; she’s survived.

Her mare misses a step as they jounce along, but Asha keeps her steady with a tug on the reins. The trees in this area creep close to the grassy hills, the Wolfswood trying to reclaim the land. She’s been in these parts before, on rangings and hunts; left the mark of her axe on the black briars and the old oaks. These woods are the Starks’, she knows, for all that the Glovers and Woodses and so many others live in them. Like much about the north, it has an icy, unsettling beauty, and at night the cold seeps into the skin. 

Even so, the North will never be in her, not like the rock and salt islands of her birth are; that, Asha can swear to, as she cocks her head, and urges her steed over the slope to meet Jon’s sudden cry of excitement.

(That promise, she breaks.)


End file.
